Çakici was convicted of establishing and leading a criminal organization, ordering a murder, instigating assault and insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, each of which carries a lengthy prison sentence.

He was a prominent name in the 1980s as a crime boss and indicted in 1995 for contracting the killing of his wife in front of their son before fleeing abroad. Following his 1998 extradition from France, Çakici was released from prison in 2002. In 2004, Çakici was extradited again, this time from Austria, and has been in prison since then.

The ruling Justice and Development Party stepped up efforts to reduce the population in Turkey's overcrowded prisons as part of measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Turkey's parliament approval of the law on Tuesday has excluded all of the Kurdish inmates, including former HDP co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, who are imprisoned on charge of terrorism.

Opposition parties opposed the bill because it excludes tens of thousands of people in jail on terrorism charges, many of them for criticizing the government, rather than carrying out acts of violence.

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